


Are You Feeling It Too?

by baudelaries



Category: Glee
Genre: 6x05, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 19:25:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3300827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baudelaries/pseuds/baudelaries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>6x05 reaction fic. A missing scene, set somewhere between mc hot chocolate and the kiss, in which Kurt and Blaine actually discuss their relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Are You Feeling It Too?

The silence falls between them like fog rolling through a city. Thick and heavy and all the more nauseating as it’s paired with the rising heat of the elevator. It’s hard to pretend, when the unspoken words are palpable and crushing like this, that everything is fine, that they’re friends, and they’re okay, and there isn’t an ocean of heartbreak and resentment between them.

Kurt shifts uncomfortably. After the panic had subsided and the laughter had stopped they had seemed to both realise, within the space of a millisecond, that they were alone with only their thoughts. He avoids Blaine’s gaze, aware of it lingering on him but stubbornly refusing to look up and meet his eyes. Everything had been fine until Blaine had mentioned  _him_ and suddenly they were back at the beginning and Kurt was being forced out of this little reality they’d created, had to accept that this was not just them, mocking and teasing and achingly in love. This was them tiptoeing a precarious line between love and familiarity, and whatever it was they were now striving for, something platonic and disappointing and hollow that makes him feel sick to his stomach.

‘I don’t understand.’ Blaine’s voice is thick and cracked with the words that have obviously been sitting in his throat for a while. He glares at his hands as he speaks, watching the way his knuckles have turned white with strain, and hoping that will soothe him.

‘Who understands anything Sue does.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ Kurt knows. Of course he knows. He was playing it off with a flash of quick wit and a change of subject in the hope that he wouldn’t have to face this.

On the one hand he wants to, wants to have it all out with Blaine, and hopes that this will somehow move them forward, beyond this stilted half-friendship they’re pretending to be okay with. But a bigger part of him feels only fear, notices his heart pounding, blood rushing in his ears, and eyes clouding with the white hot terror of facing his feelings, of admitting his faults. He certainly doesn’t want to do this now when he’s sure Sue’s watching the whole thing unfold from her lair.

‘I just… I don’t understand why you did it? I think about it all the time and I can’t come up with an explanation other than the fact that you don’t love me, which I know isn’t true because look at this, look at us.’ Blaine’s gestures between them, eyes imploring as Kurt finally looks up to meet them. It’s a look he knows all too well, the honest, open, begging to understand, please just tell me even if it hurts look that he’s never quite been able to resist. Blaine looks so small, so resigned in this moment that all Kurt wants to do is reach out and make it better, fix this thing between them that he broke. But he doesn’t know how to anymore. Doesn’t even know if he’s allowed to.

‘I think…’ Kurt begins but realises he doesn’t quite have the words, swallows, tries to sort this all out in his head and realises he can’t, not really, he doesn’t know the answer himself. ‘I was terrified. I was so scared that one day I was going to wake up and hate you that I… I couldn’t do it anymore.’

He pauses, tries to sift through the words he’s whispered to himself so many times before in a desperate attempt to rationalise this, to understand how he’d gone from being so desperately in love with Blaine and engaged to him, to now: so desperately in love with Blaine, and watching him live with someone else.

‘I’d never felt fear like that before. It was there all the time from the minute I woke up, this blind panic that we were going to lose everything. Everyone left and it was so hard, all we did was fight about the wedding and where to eat and stupid things like toothpaste and it was like I kept seeing flashes of a future where everything fell apart and we resented each other. I felt like I needed it all to stop, everything kept piling up and I wanted to protect us and I just thought that if things weren’t moving so quickly then we wouldn’t end up hating each other.’ He speaks in a jumble, a mad rush of words spilling from him in some desperate attempt to make this right, to patch up the damage. HIs words echo what he’s whispered to his therapist in a hoarse voice, what he’s repeated every night in his head, trying to understand. He knows the “too young” thing is just a rouse, something to wield in front of himself like armour, something to rationalise away. When he’d watched his peers fall in and out of love he’d always thought they were too young, too young to be making all those promises to each other, but he’d never felt that with him and Blaine. Maybe that was part of the problem all along, the way they held themselves to such high esteem, a superior couple, it was bound to come crashing down around them in the end.

‘Breaking up really helped solve that problem.’ Blaine shoots back bitterly, a hint of challenge in his voice. He knows he’s being petulant, and he knows he’s probably destroying this tentative friendship they’ve built over the past few weeks, but he doesn’t think he can go on living like this, with so many unanswered questions and so many repressed feelings.

‘We shouldn’t have broken up that night, it was late and I was alone and all I’d done all day was think about how you are my best friend in the entire world and how every fight it felt like you were slipping through my fingers and then you turned up late talking about the wedding and I just thought: if we fight again I’m going to lose him forever.’ Kurt shifts nervously, this is the most honest conversation they’ve had in months, since before they even broke up. Blaine’s eyes on him make his skin crawl, he feels naked and exposed and vulnerable and all he wants to do is curl up and brush this off, go back to pretending none of it happened. Somehow he forces himself to continue ’I couldn’t even recognise what we’d become. I was angry and frightened and we were both suddenly in a very adult situation that I don’t think either of us were ready for, it was easy when every one else was there and we knew we were all struggling, but when it was just the two of us we only had each other to take it out on and I felt like I was drowning every day, every time we couldn’t make it work. I don’t know why but I thought that by making everything stop I was protecting us from ourselves.’

‘And I thought that everything I’d ever feared was coming true, I thought that the most important person in my life had woken up one day and decided he didn’t love me.’ kurt’s face crumples at that, all he wants to do is reach out for Blaine and it seems to be the one thing he can’t do right now. He hadn’t realised it at the time, had been too numb with anger and shock to fully comprehend what he’d done, but then when he was back at the loft, lying in an empty bed, that was when it hit him. He’d done exactly what he’d promised Blaine he’d never do and the thought that Blaine felt any of that, inadequate or abandoned or as if Kurt somehow didn’t love him, had kept him awake for weeks.

‘I think I loved you too much. I was selfish in calling it off, I know that, but I also thought I was protecting you.’

Blaine knows he should be focusing on everything Kurt’s saying, he was the one that wanted to talk this out after all. But that one word rings in his ears,  _past tense_ , and he speaks before he’s even aware of what he’s doing. ‘Loved?’

‘Love.’ Kurt corrects quickly, there’s no denying it really, no use in exploiting this just friends charade any longer. ‘You know that I love you. And I can’t make up for how I hurt you or the fact that I called off our  _wedding_. We should’ve spoken about it more.’

‘We should’ve had this conversation back then.’ Blaine agrees ‘Maybe then we wouldn’t have…’ He let’s the words trail off by themselves, can’t bear to say it to again, to hear those words out loud and know they’re true.

‘You were just so angry and I barely even realised what I’d done. You ran off into the rain and I- I let you. By the time I’d got home you were already gone, and I was afraid talking about it would just make it worse, that if I even thought about it, it would destroy me. I spent so many months kidding myself that it didn’t happen or that I didn’t care.’

Blaine nods, he still doesn’t agree with Kurt, but he understands it a little better now, knows that they both have problems that keep resurfacing, and that maybe while he was so busy trying to pretend they were alright back in New York he didn’t notice how much Kurt was breaking.

‘We both had so many problems, and I don’t think either of us were particularly committed to working through them. I don’t understand why you did it, but I understand how we ended up in a situation where you even wanted to.’

‘Our problem is that we were just too perfect.’ They laugh together, suddenly, jarringly, a little lighter and little closer to the kids who were joking about ironic rapper names just moments before. ‘ I mean it, when we first started dating everything was wonderful and beautiful and I’d never been so happy in my life, and then the second things got hard, the second it became a real adult relationship outside the world of high school and show choir we lashed out. I think we kept going back to the start, kept wanting what he had, but it wasn’t real, it wasn’t grown up and we-‘

‘Outgrew it?’ Blaine’s surprised by his own voice and terrified of what Kurt will say. The idea that he and Kurt outgrew their high school romance has been something he’s clung to religiously but suddenly faced with the possibility of it being true, with Kurt agreeing, makes him feel nauseous and dizzy.

‘I don’t think so, I don’t feel like i’ve outgrown you, or us. I definitely think we’ve matured a lot, but I just think we didn’t adapt quick enough, we weren’t used to working for what we had.’

‘But breaking up with me- calling it off, isn’t that playing right into it, isn’t that giving up all together?’

‘Yes. I see that now, and it was solely my fault and I am so sorry Blaine, I’m so so sorry, I don’t know if I can ever fix this but I want to try. I want to fight for us.’ Kurt doesn’t know where this will leave them, both of them friends, dating other people, and yet still in love with each other, none of it makes sense to him but he knows that he has to tell Blaine the truth, that being honest is (hopefully) the first step to fixing this.

Blaine doesn’t speak for so long that Kurt thinks he’s overstepped, misinterpreted the situation, and now he’s lost not only his fiancé but his best friend too, when he’d only just got him back. It’s only as his heart is hammering in his chest and he’s blinking back the tears that Blaine turns to him.

‘I don’t think you’re solely to blame, we both have faults and we’re both working on them and I- I want to fight for us too.’

Kurt breathes out a sigh, something like relief and desperation and heartache and hope all rolled into one. He leans forward, not sure what else he can do when his entire body is aching for Blaine, and wraps his arms around the other boy. Blaine folds into him, gripping Kurt so tight it’s hard for either of them to breathe.

‘So where does this leave us?’ When eventually they part, Kurt feels a little bolder discussing it, bolstered by the knowledge that whatever he says Blaine is on his side, and they can finally get back to being friends, or whatever it is they will always be to each other.

‘I don’t know, I don’t think we should jump back into a relationship together right away, I think we’d just relive our past mistakes. I think we should be smart about this and-‘ Blaine’s eyes go wide, the colour draining from his face as a realisation dawns on him. ‘I have a boyfriend.’ he says in a soft, almost shocked voice.

‘So do I, kind of.’ Kurt replies. The two of them stare into the empty space between their bodies. This is all so confusing, the weight of their situation sitting heavy on their chests so that it’s hard to draw breath, and their skin itching with a suddenly cold sweat despite the rising temperature of the room. Neither of them know how to navigate this situation.

‘Right.’ Blaine begins, thinking out loud more than anything. ‘So we’re not together, but we’re working on it, working on ourselves and-‘

‘Friends?”

‘Friends. Yeah. We can do that.You’ll always be my best friend, Kurt.’

Kurt smiles, this actually feels okay, not perfect, not them, but okay. This is the first time in weeks he’s been able to look Blaine in the eye and not feel like his chest is about to cave in on itself, and the shining smile he gets in return is enough to make it all worth it.

‘Can I just ask?’ He’s pushing it he knows, testing the boundaries when perhaps he shouldn’t, but he knows he’ll regret this forever if he doesn’t try. ‘You’re not ruling us out altogether?’

‘No. I Don’t think I can ever truly rule us out, Kurt. But I think we both still have a lot to work through and I think right now we should just focus on supporting each other as friends, lest we make the same mistakes again.’

‘You’re right, that sounds smart.’

‘And I just want you to know, I forgive you.’ The look on Blaine’s face makes Kurt’s heart ache, the bashful, beautiful smile that reminds Kurt of the boy he used to be, but so much more mature, more sure of himself. Kurt’s thankful, no matter what’s happened between them, that he got to watch Blaine grow into the person he is today, got to watch him and love him and support him. A weight he wasn’t even aware of seems to have been lifted from his chest at Blaine’s words, he feels lighter and happier and more hopeful than he has in months.

‘Thank you, Thank you so much, Blaine.’ Kurt reaches out to hug him again, now that he knows he can it’s like he doesn’t ever want to stop, even if it’s in the most platonic of manners he still itches to be close to Blaine.’

‘Do you forgive me?’ It’s harder for Blaine to get the words out than he expected, so much of their future seems to be dependent on this conversation and he feels like any misstep could ruin everything. It’s ridiculous of course, he knows that, but he still needs to hear Kurt say the words. He’s not sure of anything: what his future holds, what he’s going to do about Dave, how they’re even going to get out of this elevator, but he knows that he needs Kurt’s forgiveness, regardless of anything else.

‘What? No I don’t need to, I’m the one that ruined everything.’

‘Please just say it, I feel like we’re both to blame and I need you to- please just say it?.’

‘Fine, I forgive you Blaine Devon Anderson. I’ll always forgive you.’ Kurt smiles at Blaine like he used to, open and joyful and without a hint of self-consciousness. Something in Blaine stirs, a kind of nostalgia and longing, effervescent memories of the two of them flashing before his eyes, but there’s more to it, like an invisible pull towards a future he can’t wait to start.

‘I suppose in a way I’m almost thankful that Sue locked us in a fake elevator together.’ Blaine grins, bumping shoulders with Kurt as they settle into a far more comfortable equilibrium than they’d been in earlier.

‘Just as long as you don’t ever tell her that.’

They’re not fixed and they’re not perfect and they’re by no means ready to be together again without hurting one another, but there’s a promise and a warmth and an inevitability in the air that makes the two of them sure that no matter what goes down in this elevator, they’re going to be alright.


End file.
